


Days Like These

by Who_Needs_Reality



Series: it's centrifugal motion; it's unthinkable [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternative Universe- Youtubers, And cannot cope, Bellamy Has Feelings, Bellamy POV of Ladylike, F/M, Fluff, Pining Bellamy, Platonic Kissing, Teacher Bellamy, YouTuber Clarke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-14
Packaged: 2018-08-30 21:57:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8550715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Who_Needs_Reality/pseuds/Who_Needs_Reality
Summary: Bellamy didn't think that any scenario involving him, Clarke, and making out could possibly be a bad one, but that's because he had in no way bargained for this.Or, a Bellamy POV for "Ladylike"





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FrisianWanderer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrisianWanderer/gifts).



> The lovely FrisianWanderer (PSA: check out their Age of Adaline AU, it's the greatest thing on Earth!!) mentioned a Bellamy POV of [Ladylike](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7962325) ages ago, so here I am, procrastinating on real life and unwilling to let go of my random AUs and move on.
> 
> Also, I was listening to Ed Sheeran's "I'm a Mess" whilst writing this and by virtue of title alone, it's the most Bellamy song after "Viva La Vida" I swear to everything.
> 
> Title from James Blunt's "Bonfire Heart."

"Hey," Clarke flops onto the sofa across from him, looking decisive.

Bellamy glances upwards and takes in Dishevelled Clarke. Dishevelled Clarke might be his favourite Clarke (okay, maybe not more than Angry Clarke, but definitely more than Formal Clarke)....who's he kidding,  _Clarke_ is his favourite Clarke. "Hey," he returns, thanking his lucky stars that she can't hear his internal monologue. It would probably put a dampener on their friendship if she knew that pretty much every conversation he had with her was usually underscored with a healthy note of  _Hi, I'm desperately in love with you!_ "What's up?"

"Do you want to platonically make out with me for the internet?"

Look, Bellamy's a teacher. Strange questions are a part of the job. He's heard great, insightful questions that make him stop to think and spark fruitful and creative discussions. He's heard shit questions too, ones that leave him unsure as to whether someone's pulling his leg or just genuinely ignorant. But whatever the question, he does a great job taking it in his stride, formulating responses that are eloquent and controlled. That's in the classroom.

Right now, he just says: "What?" Because. Well.  _What_? 

Clarke shifts slightly, apparently uncomfortable with the silence, but can she  _blame_ him? You don't just spring that on someone. "You know for the kissing component of the lipstick video." Oh, right. Bellamy remembers Clarke and Raven talking about this yesterday-- they were going to test lipstick durability for their youtube channel, and part of that test was seeing how the lipstick withstood kissing. "I can't find anyone and my backup option is Cage Wallace and you seem like you'd be pretty good at this so be a sport and help me out."

This is weird territory for friends when one  _isn't_ in love with the other. Or he thinks it is. None of his other friends, his _you're-not-Clarke-so-I'm-not-in-love-with-you-despite-the-fact-that-you're-an-exceptionally-good-looking-group-of-people_  friends have ever propositioned him, so he doesn't exactly have a yardstick by which to judge. Which also leaves him in the position of having no fucking clue what to do with this right now. "You want me to make out with you. Platonically."

He's very aware that he has not blinked for a solid three minutes, his panicked stare never wavering from Clarke, who looks increasingly concerned for his health. "Do it for the views Bellamy."

 _Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit_. "Can I... uh. Can I think about it?"  _Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit_..... 

"What? Oh. Yeah. Yeah sure." She gets up slowly to leave the room, and Bellamy is peripherally, in the back of his mind, mortified, because yeah, this admittedly weird situation probably  _doesn't_ merit a full-scale meltdown, but at the moment it's taking almost everything he has not to slither off the sofa to the floor and curl into foetal position. 

When he finally manages to pick enough pieces of his shattered self-possession off of the floor in order to leave, he makes his way to Clarke's room. Her bedroom door is shut so he hovers awkwardly trying to recover his powers of speech. The muffled sound of Clarke's voice drifts out, then grows steadily louder until its muffled shouting. He knocks tentatively. "Uh, Clarke-- is everything good?"

"Yeah!" she sings back sounding positively chipper as she opens the door, and  _fuck,_ it's the Clarke he privately refers to as Soft Clarke, sweatpants and messy ponytail and all, and in that moment he just kind of wants to kiss her senseless, but the word _platonic_ is still bouncing around his head like one of those cymbal-banging monkey toys, so before he does something idiotic he just says goodbye, leaves her apartment, and then all but falls back to his car. 

***

"Dude," Miller asks, looking unimpressed, "when did we start doing this?" he waves a hand between them.

Bellamy lifts his face from his hands in order to emit a properly derisive snort. "By  _this_ do you mean talking? Or emotions?"

"Yeah, given that _I'm_ in a committed relationship I think we both know that's not what I mean."

Bellamy scowls petulantly.

Miller sighs in a world-weary sort of way. "I  _mean_ when did I become your crisis counsellor? When did we arrive at the point at which  _you_ have a bizarro internal shitstorm and your first thought is  _yeah I gotta go spill my guts to Miller about this_?"

"What are friends for?" he mutters sardonically.

"I'm good for petty bitching about people with. Also, watching TV in silence. And complaining about Sophomores, because seriously, why are they  _all_ like that? Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled you've progressed somewhat from your _repress everything I feel until I might actually die_ phase. But unpicking emotional catastrophes is Clarke's thing."

" _Not when she is the emotional catastrophe_!" he yells, "or, you know, the cause of it or whatever." He slides his face back into his hands again.

Miller doesn't say anything for a moment, and Bellamy can hear his silent judgement. "I still don't see what the problem is here," he says, "you're all stupid about Clarke, you hope your friendship one day progresses to encompass kissing and romance etcetera, Clarke asks you to kiss her."

" _Platonically_ , Miller,  _platonically_. She asked me to make out with her  _platonically_. Platonically!"

"You know how when you repeat a word so often it stops sounding like a real word and loses all meaning?"

"Shut the fuck up." 

Miller sighs again, sounding pained, which seems a bit much given that this isn't  _his_ emotional crisis. "Maybe if you would just tell her the truth you wouldn't have to talk yourself into despair like this."

"No! She's already made it clear she doesn't feel the way I do, and I don't want to fuck up our friendship. I can't do that!" He rakes a hand through his hair, desperate. 

Miller shrugs. "So tell her no, you won't make out with her."

Bellamy says nothing.

The other man's eyes narrow. "Oh for fuck's _sake_."

"It's not my fault I've literally dreamt about kissing her! Like all these--"

"Bellamy Bradbury Blake if you want to sit in this office a minute longer you will not finish that sentence."

He huffs. "Fine."

"Look if you're so keen to make out with her, then tell her yes. There's an astoundingly easy solution here."

Bellamy groans. "I feel so creepy, though. Like I'm taking advantage of her."

"Dude, she asked you to do this. She doesn't know you're in love with her. Because you won't tell her..."

Bellamy swivels absently in his chair. "I'm gonna do it," he says eventually. "Okay. Yeah. I'll do it. It'll be fine. I'll play it cool, it'll all work out. We'll be friends who've made out. Platonically. I got this."

Miller shakes his head into his pile of ungraded quizzes.

***

Bellamy's dialling her as soon as he leaves Miller's office because he knows if he waits any longer he'll talk himself out of it. 

"Hey Bell," she says when she picks up.

"I'll do it," he blurts. Not smooth exactly, but hey, it's better than just choking.

"Really? Great! Wait, this is about the--"

"The making out. Platonically. Right."

"Okay. Okay, great. Thanks, Bell, this is really helpful!" 

He wishes he could sound as normal as she does about this, but fuck it, he's forgotten what it's like to  _not_ be stupidly besotted with her so that ship has sailed. "Sure, I'll swing by the studio around five-thirty." 

"See you then."

 _Now_ he chokes. "Uh-huh. Bye." He hangs up before he full-on asphyxiates, and heads into his own classroom. 

Luckily, there's nothing like thirty disengaged Juniors to activate his Teacher mode, and Teacher mode always brings a clear head. He actually manages to put all thoughts of making out, platonic or otherwise, out of his head until the final bell rings. 

He has a couple of hours to kill before he has to face the music, so he takes some unfinished lesson plans to a café that's loud enough to prevent too much dwelling on stuff, and gets quite a lot of work done, and then it's time to go.

***

To his credit, Bellamy only considers vaulting over the side of a bridge and running away for about five seconds before squaring his shoulders and walking into the studio of the Internet media company where Clarke works. He doesn't like the place much-- like many places in LA, it's in a sketchy sort of area and looks kind of like the lots in movies where horrific late-night murders and/or occult rituals happen, and it took several weeks for him to finally believe that no, Octavia and Clarke weren't going to be kidnapped as sacrifices ("Don't worry about me, big brother," Octavia had said, grinning wolfishly when he'd broached the perhaps paranoid subject, "I'm pretty sure you have to be virginal to be sacrificed." That had ended that conversation forever and always). Still, he wishes that this was happening somewhere less unsettling because his nerves do not need the added strain.

Clarke's got her back to the door when he walks in, so he brushes her lightly on the shoulder, saying "hey."

"Hey. Thanks again for doing this."

He smiles wearily. "What are friends for?"

She snorts. "Not usually this."

He laughs then and feels himself relax just a little, because, at the end of the day, this is still  _Clarke_. She's his best friend, they're going to be fine, it's going to be fine. He lets himself sling an arm around her, prays she doesn't notice his heartbeat falter as she nestles into him.

"Can I ask you something?" she asks, closing her eyes.

"Yep."

"How weird is this for you? Like, how uncomfortable are you with what's about to happen?"

He swallows, schooling his expression into something neutral as he watches her, hoping to gauge a reaction when he says: "What makes you think I'm uncomfortable?"

She hits him with some side-eye that would make Raven jealous. "Come on, Bellamy, I thought you were going into shock when you called!"

Well, apparently he wasn't quite as enigmatic as he'd hoped. Of course not. "Okay, not my finest hour." Clarke turns her head slightly to nuzzle at his shoulder, and his brain almost short-circuits then and there. It takes some very rapid counting to ten in Latin in his head to regain his focus. "I was just surprised. You caught me off guard."

Someone (probably Miller), somewhere is choking on their laughter at his staggering ineptitude. He can  _feel_ it. 

Thankfully, before he can dissolve any further Monty sticks his head out the door of the room where they're going to film, headphones looped around his neck. "You're up guys."

They follow him into the room. It's a pretty low-key set-up, just a white backdrop with a couple of lights and cameras facing it, with a stool which Monty perches himself on. Luckily, Monty doesn't waste time with too much preamble or build-up and seems happy to let them just go for it.

Bellamy shifts so he and Clarke are facing each other against the white backdrop. He huffs slightly, feeling too full of air all of a sudden.

"Okay," Monty calls, "ready when you are."

Clarke takes a step forward and lays a hand on either of his shoulders. He thinks her fingers might have been trembling a little, but he can't tell. There's a warmth spreading from where her hands rest on him, it's doing things to his head.

She smirks at him. You can close your eyes and think of England."

He snorts. That, for some reason gets him (who's he kidding, snark is his native language, of course it gets him), and he feels a sharp spike of  _something_ , something only propelled by the glimmer of challenges he catches in Clarke's eyes, her eyes which are so close to him right now. He only gets to do this once, and he'll be damned if he's going to fuck it up. 

"Oh shut up." He cups her face-- it fits so beautifully in his hands he thinks he might break-- and lowers his head to close the difference between them, overcome by a sense of utter surprise and feeling completely at home as their lips meet. She is soft and sharp all at once, the gentleness of her lips offset by the slightest grazing of her teeth. He wants, he needs more suddenly, and presses her closer, throwing caution to the wind, feeling her arms wind around his neck as his snake around her waist, their bodies lining up perfectly. He opens his mouth against hers, and when he tastes her with the darting of his tongue she tastes like salt and mint and something else, something that is entirely hers. People always describe kissing as fireworks, as lightning, as wildfire but that's not what this is. This feels like the coming of high tide, the ebb and flow of the ocean mounting steadily and overwhelmingly and unceasingly, and he wants nothing more than to give himself to it, to buckle at the knees and let Clarke drown him. 

As though their bodies hear his thoughts, they break apart, both of them breathless. He can't hear anything for a moment, the rush of blood in his ears seeming louder than any waves. Bellamy looks at her. She's staring at him, her eyes impossibly wide, pupils blown, and her lips are trembling as though tracing the movements of their kiss against the air. Without quite knowing what he's doing, he raises his pinky finger and with it wipes away a stray smear of lipstick from the corner of her mouth, feeling the brush of her breath against his finger as he does so.

"Cut!" Monty calls, and  _oh fuck fuck fuck-ity fuck he is so fucking fucked_. Reality come crashing down around him, louder and more brash than even Octavia has ever managed to be, and he remembers the extent of the fucked-up in which he is embroiled like he's been hit by a freight train. 

 _Abort! Abort! Abort! "_ Okay I'm going to take off now." His brain might actually have short-circuited now, because he can't form coherent thoughts. He has literally no idea what to do, so he sticks out his hand. 

Clarke stares at him, and he braces himself because he recognises that look of rapidly snowballing incredulity mounting behind her eyes like a forest fire, and oh she is  _pissed_. "Seriously, what the fuck?"

Nope, he's got nothing.

Her control shatters spectacularly. "Bellamy Blake, why the fuck are you regressing on six years of friendship into the awkward acquaintance stage that we bypassed completely because we were too busy yelling at each other?"

Hey, he doesn't _want_ to be sparking like a malfunctioning automaton, but he's fucking screwed and has no clue what to do with it. "Jesus, I'm sorry!" He knows he sounds angry, and that may be unfair, but trying to control this many emotional outburst at once is about as easy as spinning plates and his composure is crumbling quickly.

"No, seriously. What the fuck is going on with you? I'm sorry I made you kiss me but--"

"For fuck's sake Clarke!" he snaps, and she blinks. "Just cut it out! You don't understand shit, so just let me go!" He knows he's being unfair but he cannot do this right now, he's too fucking tired and he just  _kissed_ her and his carefully practiced charade of  _not_ being in love with her is razed and she  _still hasn't realised_ and he's  _done_.

She's not though, because Furious Clarke recovers alarmingly quickly. "Don't pull that one on me," she hisses, "the whole emotional repression and withdrawal thing. We're better than that," she sounds almost pleading now, "you're my best friend. Talk to me."

The strain in her voice is what undoes him.  _This_ ,he thinks,  _is exactly what you were supposed to avoid. You just had to leave the friendship intact. Nice going_. "Jesus. I know. I'm sorry. I just...this is hard for me, okay?"

She just looks confused. "What is?"

" _Platonic making out!_ " he yelps (honestly he could not give fewer fucks at this point, he left dignity three miles back, this emotional cataclysm is all he has left).

Clarke's brow furrows. "I'm sorry. Seriously. If I'd known it would freak you out this much I would have left it." She tries for humour. "Hey, next time I need a make-out buddy I'll take my business elsewhere--"

No!" What was that Cate Blanchett quote? _If you know you're going to fail, fail gloriously._  Applicable. "I mean, obviously if you want to that's fine, and that's your choice. But that's literally the opposite of what I want."

He waits for Clarke to start backing hastily away and high-tailing it over the hills. She doesn't. "So you...want to make out with me?"

He chokes a laugh. "Yes. God, yes. Don't get me wrong, Clarke, you're my best friend and I wouldn't lose that for the world, but I want to make-out with you. A lot, and frequently. And also date you. And also do a whole host of other completely non-platonic things with you."

Her expression is unreadable. "So you were freaking out because I prefixed my make-out request with platonic."

Bellamy rubs the back of his neck with his hand. "I get it," he mumbles, "you were clear on where you stood. I thought I could do this platonically but it turns out I was less equipped to handle this than I thought. So it doesn't have to be weird or anything, I'm not trying to burden you with my angst, but just--"

And he's never seen a tidal wave breaking but he imagines it might feel something like this.  _This_ being Clarke Griffin surging forward and capturing his lips with her own, stealing his breath until he's giving it to her, giving everything to her. He feels like there's a freaking bonfire erupting in his chest and god, he loves burning. 

Clarke doesn't break the kiss exactly, just moves it, peppering her mouth all over his face, leaving stars in her wake. He can see her smiling (it's his favourite smile in the world). "I only said platonic," she tells him between kisses, "because I didn't think you liked me."

He laughs at that, more deeply than he means to, because,  _hoo boy_ , and catches her face, pulling her back-- not too far back, just so he can look at her, look at the way she seems to be glowing from within and all because of  _him_ \-- "I don't," he says softly, because there's nothing he wants to hide from her anymore, "I love you."

She doesn't manage to say it back for nearly an hour, when she's straddling his lap and they've both shed their shirts, but it's the best thing to ever happen to him ever.

***

Bellamy pretends to look offended. "You could at least  _pretend_ to look happy for me," he says.

"Oh I am," says Miller, though he sounds almost mournful. "Don't get me wrong, I'm  _ecstatic_ you worked through your bullshit and Clarke's great--"

"I know." He smirks when Miller scowls.

"And above all I'm thrilled we can end the quasi-counselling. But you are  _not_ making me your person. I am not going to be the person who you go all starry-eyed to while you wax poetic about how amazing your girlfriend is."

Bellamy's sigh is only half-mocking. "I can't believe she's my  _girlfriend_."

"When I projectile vomit, it's going to be all over your stupid bookshelf. Your Odyssey collection will feel the force of how sickening you are."

 

Bellamy normally doesn't take threats to his Odyssey collection lightly ("You  _nerd_ ," Clarke says, "I get collecting books but several copies of  _the same_ book? Really?") but on this occassion, he just claps Miller's shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll leave you alone."

Miller looks unimpressed. 

"You'll need the time to write the best man speech."

Miller flips him off and claims he needs a new dental plan because Bellamy's making his teeth hurt, but it's all good. They both know it'll happen eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! Kudos/Comments make the world go round <3


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